San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
The future of the gig economy.
For her Twitch viewers, watching Shahmeen Kasim painting with watercolors and then playing the popular video game “Fortnite” for six hours is more entertaining than regular TV.
That’s because Kasim’s LifeWithLaughs channel is an interactive, two-way conversation between the San Francisco resident and her 48,000 followers, who share her interest in playing games, painting, making lollipops and sculpting clay.
“On Twitch, it’s like improv,” Kasim, 25, said in an interview. “It’s more free, it’s more the real you. It’s humbling to have a platform where an audience can join you on an adventure.”
Twitch, a San Francisco company bought by Amazon in 2014 for $972 million, is best known as the online mecca for fans to watch, play and talk about their favorite video games. But in the past two years, it’s broadened out, Amazon-like, to carry streams on a range of topics, such as broadcasts of the U.S.-North Korea summit, the royal wedding and (soon)
“On Twitch, it’s like improv. It’s more free, it’s more the real you.”
Shahmeen Kasim, Twitch star
NFL football.
And amid the upheaval in traditional media, the company is “ultimately what the future of video entertainment is likely to look like,” said analyst Joost van Dreunen, CEO of the industry research firm SuperData.
Twitch does something that traditional TV broadcasts can’t. It lets streamers, who equip themselves with video cameras and microphones, talk live with their viewers, who constantly text a stream of comments and questions visible on the screen next to the main video.
“Part of what Twitch is accomplishing is giving audiences real-time, authentic connections to people who share their interests,” said van Dreunen. “It’s a very innovative model that happens to be worth a lot to companies like Amazon.”
The idea of watching someone else play video games online — still the primary draw for Twitch’s age 18-to-34 core audience — might still seem strange to nongamers. But Twitch has tapped into a growing market fueled by the greater availability of broadband internet connections and popularity of e-sports. About 15 million daily active users watched more than 355 billion minutes worth of video last year.
The audience for gaming video in the U.S. is larger than for HBO, Netflix, ESPN and Hulu combined, according to SuperData.
On March 14, professional gamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins — who has said he earns about $500,000 a month from his Twitch channel that has more than 8.2 million followers — drew a Twitch record 628,000 concurrent viewers while playing the battle-for-survival game “Fortnite” with superstar rap musician Drake.
“That was a cultural milestone for Twitch,” said company spokesman Chase, who, like Drake, goes by one name.
Besides games, Twitch’s potpourri of content now includes painting, music, sculpting, cooking, makeup, brewing beer, cosplay, chess, news and politics, and sports. HBO has shown episodes of its hit series “Silicon Valley” on Twitch; the show itself featured a character who streamed on Twitch. Twitch is also in the midst of hosting a 500episode marathon of classic “Doctor Who” sci-fi TV series episodes.
In the fall, Twitch will add NFL “Thursday Night Football” to a sports mix that includes pro basketball, wrestling, baseball, hockey, darts, drone racing and Mexican lucha libre professional wrestling.
“We’re still predominantly (video) gaming,” said Michael Aragon, Twitch’s senior vice president of content. “It really is about bringing in content that is of interest to that audience and doing it in ways that are native to Twitch.”
There are plenty of offbeat streams. One day last week, up to 55 people were watching a 73-yearold man wearing a sleeveless undershirt playing songs by request on his 61-year-old Steinway piano.
“People who are fans of anything love talking about it,” said Syracuse University Professor Olivia Stomski, director of the school’s Newhouse Sports Media Center.
During an interview in Twitch’s offices on Bush Street, Aragon found about 4,000 viewers logged into the “Doctor Who” channel about 30 minutes before the next showing, posting messages about their favorite episodes.
“They’re all gathering together as a community and chatting about it ... even though the show’s not on,” Aragon said.
Twitch, which started in 2011, is taking a page from Amazon’s playbook. The Seattle company initially sold books online, but has grown into an e-commerce behemoth selling just about everything and overwhelming the traditional retail industry.
So should major TV networks fear Twitch’s expansion beyond video games?
“I don’t know that the answer is yes, but they’d better take notice,” said Stomski. Twitch has teamed up with the university on an upcoming course called Esports & Media.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has seen the potential, saying he wanted NBA telecasts to look more like Twitch. Although regular games aren’t on yet, Twitch did stream minor league NBA G League games last season.
One Twitch feature lets gamers stream the official G League video feed, but overlay their own play-by-play. A streamer named GoldGlove announced a Rio Grande-Austin Spurs game, complete with his own bad lip-reading version of post-game interviews, followed by several more hours of himself playing “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.” The broadcast drew about 2,600 views for GoldGlove, who has 1.2 million followers and sponsors like Hot Pockets.
“G League games were really a way for the NBA to try to target an audience that may not be as engaged with the NBA,” Aragon said.
Twitch, which has grown to about 1,500 employees and is reportedly moving to larger space at 350 Bush St., faces it’s biggest threat from Google’s YouTube Gaming.
But being first to mine the game streaming market has given Twitch a huge head start over YouTube, Facebook Live and other contenders, giving it time to spend “years perfecting the technology, tools and applications for its content,” said Jelle Kooistra, head analyst for the game industry research firm Newzoo.
And Twitch has built a strong identity with the gamers, who “can be very fickle,” he said in an email. “Content that ventures too far from what the gaming community finds interesting or funny will be unlikely to find an audience on the platform, and will have an easier time on YouTube or Facebook.” Shahmeen Kasim loves interacting with her audience, and sometimes streams into the wee hours of the morning from her Mission Bay apartment.
“Last night my stream was seven hours,” she said. “We can have conversations about deeper topics and issues. People who are watching can encourage each other and help each other out. I have two community members who met through my chat and are getting married next month.”
And from what she’s seen, “No one under 30 is watching TV.”